GEDmatch Tag Groups - Tricks for Multiple Kit Analysis

(00:00):
It’s time to get started on one of the best tools on GEDMatch, the multiple kit analysis. But this isn’t something that we’re gonna be able to cover in just one video. This is something that’s going to take multiple videos. So sit back and be ready for several episodes about the multiple kit analysis.

(00:22):
Howdy, I’m Andy Lee with Family History fanatics, where we help you understand your DNA, climb your family tree and write your ancestor stories along the way. Today I’m going to cover tag groups and how they can help you with the multiple kit analysis tool. So let’s go over to GEDmatch and show you how you can create tag groups. So here I am on the GEDmatch homepage, and if you scroll down you’ll see that there is nothing here that says tag groups. And if you have just a free account, you’ll notice multiple kit analysis is one of the tier one tools. So how can you create tag groups? Well, there is a trick. If you go over to your profile management page, one of the options is the tag group management. When I click on that, it will allow me to set up whatever tag groups I want.

(01:13):
Now you can set this up based on matches based on family members. I’m just gonna call this one my close family. I can change this color to any color of the rainbow. And then I can just add that tag group that says that it’s been created. And now when I go to tag group management, I can see there is a tag group. But you’ll notice there is no kits in this tag group. And if I go and display it, it says there’s no kits exist because all I’ve done is create that group. I haven’t added anything to it. I’m going to manually add kits. When I click on this, it allows me to enter up to five kits. I’m just gonna enter one of my numbers and it’s added that one to my tag group. You can see here there is a kit number listed and that is what is in the tag group.

(02:06):
Now tag groups are a way that you can organize your DNA matches. You can color ’em different ones so that when you do a one to many search, then they’ll show up as that, or you can just be able to go and look at the tag group itself. However, with the free account, there’s not a lot else that you can do. Where the power of tag groups come in is with the multiple kit analysis tool. I’ve logged in now to my tier one account and as I scroll down, what I have access to now is the multiple kit analysis. So I can use this tool in conjunction with tag groups that I create, or I can also create tag groups within the multiple kit analysis. Let’s go in and explore and show you how you can use tag groups. I’m going to start on the one too many and it’s important that you use the tier one one to many for this because we’re going to use the select column over here.

(03:06):
And that’s gonna allow us to take a lot of kits over to the multiple kit analysis. Now these first few kits are all my family, but as you can see, I’ve gone down and I’ve checked several of these other kits that I want to look at together. So after I’ve checked on that, I can go up and I can click on the visualization options. Once I’m on the visualization options page, all the kits that I’ve selected are listed across the top here. And then I have all these different options. And this is why this is going to take several videos to do. We’re gonna just look at the tag groups right now. Here are my tag groups. Now you can see that I’ve already created some, but there’s also the option to create a new one. And this is based on the kits that I’ve just selected. It says add tag group with kits. So I’m going to create a new kit right here. I can change the color just like I did before. And then I’ll have all these kits that I just selected from the one to many as part of a tag group. So we’ll call this my practice kit, and we’re gonna change this color to let’s do a nice yellow right here at the top. And then I’m gonna just add that tag group with the kits.

(04:23):
It has added 21 kits to that tag group. Now going back to that tag group, I can do several different things with each tag group. First off, I can display which kits are part of that tag group. I can also remove kits or add kits to that tag group with any one of these. Now, when you are adding kits or removing kits, you have to understand which one it is. These buttons to remove kits and ad kits are not to add or remove individual kits. You’d actually have to go to the display edit tag group to do that. What these buttons to remove or add kits is to remove or add those kits that you just selected that are part of the multiple kit analysis. These are the kits that are just listed at the top here that I’ve already blanked out for privacy reasons.

(05:11):
Wherever  you click on remove kits or ad kits, it’s going to add all of those at the same time. So you can quickly add multiple kits to a tag group or remove multiple kits from a tag group if you need to. Now, when I go and display or edit the tag group, it’s going to list all the kits. Again, just like we did in the free version. One of the things that you may want to do is change who the first person is, and that is with the move to first button. Basically, when you create a tag group, the first person is usually what you’re going to be comparing everybody else to in some cases, although in some other tools that we’ll see, you’re actually gonna be comparing everybody to everybody else. You can also delete a kit anytime you want by just clicking on the delete kit.

(06:00):
The edit group attributes will allow you to change the color if you don’t like that color that you’ve selected and you want to change it with somebody else. So what other tool might you want to use tag groups with? Well, you actually might want to use it with the comparison tool of people who match both of one or two kits. This tool right here where this tool is very useful is, for instance, if you have a cousin or a second cousin that you know well then if you are comparing two kits, what you have as a list of people who both have a common ancestor in the case of second cousin that would be a great grandparents or in first cousins, that would be your grandparents. By putting them in a tag kit, you’ve basically identified the people that all are related through that line of descent.

(06:58):
And so when you think about some other programs like Ancestry allow you to color code tag groups are a way to color code things. And by using the people who match both of one or two kits, you can quickly compare many people I have here on this tool. A second cousin of mine that I know is related through my grandmother, so through her parents. And then I also have my kit. So all of the people that match both of us should be related through that single grandparent or that great-grandparent pair. So let me go down and let me see the results. So I have here a list of all the kits that match both of us. Now these first ones are actually all of my close relatives, so I’m not gonna worry about those. But all the ones after this are going to be more distant relatives.

(08:24):
And so I can just select all of those and I can submit those to the multiple kit analysis. Once I’m in the visualization options, I can go over to the tag groups and add these people to a tag group. I can create a new tag group, but in this way I can actually organize a lot of the matches that I have on GEDmatch. And I mentioned that tag groups are very useful in the multiple kit analysis, but you don’t necessarily need to have tag groups for multiple kit analysis, although I use them with that tool a lot. In the next series of videos that I do about the plicate analysis, we’ll go over some of those other tools. So if you’d like to learn more about GEDmatch, then you can watch this video up here. Or if you just want something fun with DNA, then check out this video right here. But remember to subscribe to our channel and click on the belt if you’d like to be notified about upcoming episodes.